Travel Reference
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naval officer who was also a buccaneer; a scientific observer with
more than a hint of the charlatan about him; a man of action whose
deeds fell far short of the heroic; a fine navigator but a poor captain;
a companion of rogues, who enjoyed the patronage of courtiers and
philosophers; and an enthralling raconteur whose writing we read
with absorbed fascination, while at the same time wondering just
how much we should believe. Dampier was certainly the first man to
sail round the world three times and, in so doing, to undergo a vari-
ety of amazingly bizarre adventures. One of those voyages he recor-
ded in what has become one of the classics of maritime writing and
one which inspired men as diverse as Defoe, Anson, Cook and R. L.
Stevenson. For all these reasons William Dampier emerges as one of
the most endearing characters in the history of circumnavigation.
'I had very early inclinations to see the world.' So Dampier
wrote in one of his books, which are the only, sketchy, sources of in-
formation about his early life. He was born near Yeovil in Somerset
in 1652 of farming stock. By the time he was sixteen he had lost both
parents, and his guardians, with the boy's willing consent, appren-
ticed him to a Weymouth shipowner. He was obviously a restless
young man, for he soon gave up his apprenticeship and signed on
aboard an East-Indiaman and, when she returned to port, he trans-
ferred to a naval man-of-war. Within the space of five years he had
travelled to the chill waters of Newfoundland, the steamy heat of
Java, and taken part in two naval engagements against the Dutch.
Such sudden changes of direction were to mark the whole course of
his life.
As abruptly as he had taken up a maritime vocation he left it. His
next job was that of an assistant plantation manager in Jamaica. That
was abandoned in favour of life aboard a Caribbean coastal trader
and from this he graduated to being a lumberjack at Campeche on
the coast of Yucatan. This rough-and- ready way of life appealed to
a strong young man and was also very lucrative. So much so that,
 
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